Obama Administration Has Already Handed Out Millions of Illegal Work Permits

A federal court has ruled that the Obama administration’s plan to issue work permits to illegal immigrants is–this is not exactly a surprise–illegal. But the Democrats are undeterred. Today, for the fourth time, they filibustered funding for the Department of Homeland Security, insisting that if Obama’s illegal program isn’t funded, the entire DHS must be shut down.

In the meantime, it has come to light that the Obama administration has been handing out illegal work permits for years. The Center for Immigration Studies has received documents in response to a Freedom of Information Act request that indicate millions of such illegal work permits have been issued since 2009. Here is the CIS report in its entirety:

Government data reveal that more than 7.4 million work permits (formally known as Employment Authorization Documents) were issued to aliens from 2009 to 2014. Because neither lawful permanent residents (green card holders) nor temporary work visa holders need a work permit, this amounts to a huge parallel immigrant work authorization system outside the numerical limits and categories set by Congress. …

Approximately 2.1 million work permits were issued to aliens with temporary visas or who entered under the Visa Waiver Program. Of these, about 1.4 million (66 percent) had a visa status for which employment is generally prohibited under the law, except in what are supposed to be rare cases. For example, more than 548,000 work permits were issued to aliens on tourist visas and 593,000 were issued to foreign students. More than 213,000 were issued to dependents of students and guestworkers — all categories in which the law prohibits employment except in rare circumstances. …

More than 2.2 million work permits were issued over this time period to illegal aliens or aliens unqualified for admission. Nearly all of these (2.1 million) were illegal aliens who crossed the border illegally (Entered Without Inspection). Inexplicably, 2,860 work permits were issued to aliens who were denied asylum, were suspected of using fraudulent documents, were stowaways, or were refused at a port of entry….

A huge number of work permits, 1.9 million, were issued to aliens whose status was unknown, not recorded by the adjudicator, or not disclosed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency that processes the applications.

The United States has never experienced anything remotely approaching the scofflaw Obama administration.